


A Fifty-First Century Christmas

by Scribe



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-30
Updated: 2009-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-05 12:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas present for yanks02, with the prompt Christmas on the TARDIS. I didn't manage this exactly, but it's in the same vein.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fifty-First Century Christmas

They'd started the list soon after Jack had come aboard. They never went to half the places on it, due to some combination of the Doctor's whim and his bad driving, but they added to it nonetheless whenever some interesting planet came up in conversation. It happened frequently. Jack and the Doctor would get into boasting matches about places they'd been with the slightest provocation and she egged them on unashamedly, asking for planets with unicorns, the best chocolate in the universe, the strangest folk music, somewhere she could fly.

Christmas in Jack's time was about a third of the way down the list. He'd been alight with mischief when he suggested it and even more so when the Doctor refused.

"You don't have to come along, you know," Jack had said. "You can just park and fiddle with the TARDIS for a bit while Rose and I enjoy the festivities. It'll be very educational for her to learn the future of her own customs, don't you think?"

The Doctor had glared and Jack had laughed, unintimidated. Fifty-first century Christmas had stayed on the list, though, and neither of them would tell her what it was.

***

Years later- lifetimes later, in so many ways- Tony had finally gone to bed after double- and triple-checking his stocking, the chimney, and the plate of crackers and cheese left for Santa (it was the little things that got you, the Doctor had said, but he'd eaten the lot happily enough). They'd spent the last hour retrieving gifts from high shelve and desk drawers, doing last minute wrapping, and arranging it all perfectly.

Rose stepped back to survey the room. The Doctor finished stuffing something he'd been hiding protectively among his socks for weeks into her stocking and came to join her, wrapping his arms around her from behind. She sighed, leaning her head back against his chest. Everything was so peaceful, waiting for the tumult of tomorrow, orderly and still with the slow flash of colored lights blinking soothingly over it all.

"Those things still give me the creeps, you know," the Doctor murmured, nodding toward the Christmas tree. She laughed quietly. He was getting used to the mundane, she thought. They'd spent so many Christmases together (no more than one every two months, she'd decided so long ago, giddy with the world and her fingertips and anxious not to spoil it) and most of those had involved running more than presents.

Thinking of the Christmases they'd had led to the memory of the one they'd never quite managed.

"So what was Christmas in the fifty-first century like?" she asked, knowing he didn't expect the question and savoring his surprise.

"You're still on about that? Really?"

"I can't help wondering, with the way you two discussed it over my head all the time. It can't be that bad, can it?"

"There was actually a reason I didn't want to tell you."

"Of course there was. You didn't want Jack and me teaming up to wheedle you about going there. It's not like that matters now, though, so you may as well tell me." She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, knowing he would read an implication into them that she hadn't intended at all. But he only said,

"You were a good wheedler."

"I am a good wheedler, you mean."

He huffed a laugh into her hair. "And I very possibly have even less ability to resist you than I once did. Alright, then." He paused, formulating his explanation. "You have to understand that cultural traditions are always changing. Just because something has the same name doesn't mean the actual practice will bear any resemblance to what you expect. Things are lost in history, you know, and reinterpreted...oh, are you sure you couldn't just live in ignorance?"

"Positive." His evident discomfiture was making her all the more curious.

"Well. Um. Religion went through a lot of changes between your time and Jack's, see. It was prohibited completely for a while, then there was the twenty-ninth century revolution, which had a movement to combine all Earth religions into one big amalgam, and beyond all that Christianity's always been flexible. That's what kept it alive so long, of course, but it also mean there were so many deconstructions and reconstructions and sects and off-shoots and fusions that by the time someone in the fiftieth century decided to revive Christmas no one actually knew what it was.

"So it's just really confused?"

"No, not exactly. See, there was one thing that they kept finding in all the different accounts, one constant, as it were- Jesus. Not the meaning, but the figure. So when they tried to recreate it, all they had to go on was a lot of contradictions and an icon of a beautiful young man tied on a frame in nothing but his underwear. Basically, Christmas became...well...a bondage festival."

"A bondage festival?"

"Now do you understand why I didn't want to take you there?"

"Especially the old you. Oh, Jack would have had a field day."

"I'm sorry, Rose," he said, suddenly intense. "If I could I'd take you there right now, there and every other place I said we couldn't go-"

She'd been expecting it, although hoping to be proven wrong, and it was easy to turn in his arms and cut him off, fingers on lips.

"Doctor," she said. "I am happy. I'm happy having my job and my family and this home and having you here, even if it is just here. It's a good here. And if we ever want to go traveling, there's a whole different earth just waiting for us, okay?"

She held his eyes until he nodded. It wasn't the last time he would need to be told, but it was one less.

"Do you?" she asked, careful to keep her voice neutral. "Have itchy feet?"

He was quiet for a long moment, looking over her head at the scene of mundane domesticity and the innocent, motionless Christmas tree presiding over it all. When he did speak it was slowly, as if the realization was coming at the same time as the words.

"No, I don't think I do," he said, and grinned down at her, delighted with his own pronouncement. She couldn't help but kiss him.

"Besides," she said when she pulled away, "there's no reason we can't have our own fifty-first century Christmas right here."

"Why, Rose Tyler," he said, waggling his eyebrows so ridiculously that it was absurd to find him as sexy as she did. She spared one last look at the decorations and reached for his hand.

"It's about time we put that tie collection of yours to good use, don't you think?"


End file.
